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on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 11:31 am by Radley Balko
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The giant burning pile of 134 tonnes of marijuana strikes me as an odd event. I know far too many people that would have cried at such a picture but would have given their left nut to be in attendance.

Other than that yeah, its a horrific catalog of government policy creating crime from what should be legitimate business. Getting high doesn’t even compare to the monstrosity of war.

Yeah man, when headless corpses hanging from overpasses produce less of an emotional reaction than a young girl staring at the body of her sister in a coffin, the veneer of civilization never looked so thin.

My extended family on my wife’s side vacationed at an all-inclusive resort in Nuevo Vallarta every other year for the last several years. We are in absolute universal agreement that there will be no return for the forseeable future. What a travesty for the local economy — we got to know the staff at the resort over the years and they must be hurting. Hard not to look at the War on People, v.Drugs as the greatest manifestation of State evil.

Yeah, it’s sad about Balloon Juice, isn’t it? I don’t mind that they “switched sides,” so to speak. Indeed, it was BJ’s willingness to look honestly and critically at its own team that made it a good read, IMO. But having switched teams, that intellectual honesty is out the window, and the blog has degenerated into the kind of mindless, partisan nonsense that it was always careful to avoid in the old days. Why does switching teams so often involve turning off critical thought?

The giant burning pile of 134 tonnes of marijuana strikes me as an odd event. I know far too many people that would have cried at such a picture but would have given their left nut to be in attendance.

Hah, I love weed, but personally you couldn’t pay me enough to smoke that bricked-up schwag shit. What always surprises me most about those pics is that people here still buy that crap. Domestic and Canadian stuff runs circles around that merch. I don’t care if it’s cheap, I don’t see the point in smoking something that won’t give you much besides a sore throat and a headache.

When I issue a proposal within my company for a project, I need to clearly state total cost (and how it is to be calculated), ROI, objectives, success metrics…and finally: Who is to be held accountable for the success/failure of the project?*

As near as I can tell, a trillion dollars was thrown at some folks without any strings. My only question is: HOW THE HELL DO I GET IN THAT LINE?!

*That’s just a high-level summary as there is much, much more required.

Let’s be realistic about Cole. But for a brief shining moment when he was realizing that the Republicans were full of shit but hadn’t yet sold his soul to Team Blue, Balloon Juice has always been stupid. It was just the other side’s kind of stupid before.

The U.S. wages a drug war and the Mexicans are killing each other in turf wars to maintain the flow.

I used to see U.S. policy as insanity but it is really nothing more than a way to grow the government and intrude further into the lives of everyone, all in the name of protecting us from this “evil scourge”. So it is not insanity. It is calculated to destroy freedom and control everything.

The gross depravity, the lack of humaneness in all of this is disgusting. Government thugs growing their operations. Cartel thugs growing theirs. and so it goes.

“The giant burning pile of 134 tonnes of marijuana strikes me as an odd event. I know far too many people that would have cried at such a picture but would have given their left nut to be in attendance.”

Yes, i would have cried and would have loved to be there, standing downwind of course. Im keeping my nuts tho. All three of them.

Sure, Balloon Juice has gotten partisan, but it’s always been more with the understanding that the Republicans really are worse, and I really can’t disagree with them on that point. I mean I’m a lot more sympathetic to Balloon Juice-style anti-Republicanism than Reason-style “both sides are bad!”-ism, which to me is a pose that requires a lot of willful ignorance of the entire decade of the oughts. Sometimes they use too much glibertarian paint (though JC usually defends you, Radley) but they also saw through the Tea Party from the beginning which Reason, to my knowledge, failed to do.

I don’t think the drug cartels will kill people as much in the USA as they do in Mexico because regular people here can still own guns. Nobody likes shooting at people that might shoot back. The best thing that could happen in Mexico would be to let regular law abiding people have guns. Well…other than legalizing drugs that is. Both would be best.

Drug warriors are using the same measures to gauge the war on drugs as they did to measure the war in Vietnam. As long as the number of dead drug dealers is greater than the number of dead law enforcement, we’re still winning. Those innocent civilians don’t enter into the equation.

You obviously don’t read Reason Magazine. Or you just see what you want to see. Either way, your estimation of Reason vs. the Tea Party Movement and their treatment of Republicans during the Bush administration is grossly inaccurate.

I mean I’m a lot more sympathetic to Balloon Juice-style anti-Republicanism than Reason-style “both sides are bad!”-ism, which to me is a pose that requires a lot of willful ignorance of the entire decade of the oughts.

Then you obviously weren’t reading Reason during the aughts. Reason is hard on the Dems because the Dems are in power right now. And because while in power, they’ve been predictably awful on economic freedom while still managing miss already-low expectations when it comes to personal freedom. It was the same for the GOP for the previous eight years, only in reverse.

From a libertarian standpoint, both sides are pretty much equally bad. As leftists, yes, I can see why John and the BJ crowd would think the GOP is worse. The difference between John and I is that I can recognize that this is a difference of opinion. I understand that John has a different worldview than I do, and that his job now is to promote and raise money for Democrats. I just wish he would do so without contributing to the general dumbing-down of public debate. John, on the other hand, seems to think the only possible explanations for Reason not hating the GOP more than the Dems is because we get marching orders from the Koch Foundation. Or because Nick Gillespie wears a leather jacket. Or because we’re all just selfish assholes. Or because Peter Suderman is married to Megan McArdle. Or something, something Ayn Rand.

I’m okay with John and his BJ bloggers having arguments with Reason. My problem is that there are rarely any actual arguments. It’s just name-calling, dung-flinging, false comparisons, and general ad hominem bullshit.

Your description fits the Hit n Run portion of the website, which is, I think, justifiably ridiculed as the “glibertarian” segment of the right. Several contributors are pretty predictable, and have been for years, as to which side they fall on, regardless who’s in power, with a small veneer of outsider impartiality. And where commenters are just as, if not more, obnoxious and unhinged as those found anywhere. A little more thought is put into the actual publication, however.

John Cole/Balloon Juice, however, I think exhibits a particular kind of pathology that we see every once in a while. We see it in folks like Charles Johnson/littlegreenfootballs and with more unhinged folks like David Horowitz. People who devote their being to one side completely, until they cannot stand the dissonance, and then flip polarity with equal but opposite passion. I think it’s more than just partisanship that makes people stupid. I think such partisanship is a marker for some other weirdness deeper down inside.

I’m not sure that follows. Heavily armed drug cartels seem to be mostly interested in protecting their profits against other heavily armed drug cartels, and the heavily armed and corrupted police. Trying to make this a gun rights issue seems misplaced here. The issue rather seems top be the horrible inhumanity prodded on by profits from a failed drug war. At some point, there simply is no real protection from the kind of people willing to commit such atrocities.

I’m okay with John and his BJ bloggers having arguments with Reason. My problem is that there are rarely any actual arguments. It’s just name-calling, dung-flinging, false comparisons, and general ad hominem bullshit.

In rebuttal, I would like to point out that, um… er… *crickets*… Glibertarians! Going Galt! Monocles! Teabaggers! Rudely Bumpko!

[i]Then you obviously weren’t reading Reason during the aughts. Reason is hard on the Dems because the Dems are in power right now.[/i]

I don’t think BJ is upset with Reason because they are hard on Dems, though. It’s more their embrace of the Tea Party movement and the condoning of their more radical behaviors. I understand that it started as a Libertarian movement, but it ceased to be so quite a while ago, when the GOP establishment decided to co-opt it.

As a Liberal, I always enjoyed Reason in the past because it was a place for for me to find intellectually honest conservative viewpoints. I’m not going to say that they didn’t piss me off sometimes, because they did – probably *because* they were intellectually honest instead of some GOP claptrap. But it’s different now. It’s not a matter of “Dammit, that’s a really good argument and I must find some way to deal with this cognitive dissidence or change my political outlook” type of annoyance, it’s “my god, I can’t believe they are still defending the Tea Party movement” type of annoyance.

And in that respect, yeah, I think Reason has fallen off that pedestal. And those of us that were into it in the past, and see now that the argument is “Balloon Juice is stupid because in a political atmosphere where Christine O’Donnell and Ken Buck are seen as strong GOP contenders they support the DNC instead… blah blah, let me ignore the actual criticism and claim that they hate us for our leather jackets” are left feeling a bit disappointed.

Cynical in CA #9: “My extended family on my wife’s side vacationed at an all-inclusive resort in Nuevo Vallarta every other year for the last several years. We are in absolute universal agreement that there will be no return for the forseeable future.”

My wife and her family are originally from Ciudad Juarez. Now only her surviving grandparents still live there. They are being urged to move over to El Paso (both have permanent resident status in the U.S., so they could). After my wife and I got married this year, her grandparents began asking us when we would go to visit. We will not visit them in Juarez, of course. I am sure they understand, but my wife tells me they are still sad that we will not come.

The drug war doesn’t just kill people, it keeps them separated when they would prefer to be together. It keeps people from fully experiencing the cultures of their new spouses and in-laws. And it has decimated the legal economy of Mexico. Someday I would like to go visit my wife’s country of birth. For now, if we go at all, it will probably have to be a resort that is somewhat isolated from the bloodshed that has engulfed much of the country. We will both miss out on a fuller experience, thanks to our drug war.

So Balko, the only reason anyone with a functioning brain reads Reason in the first place is now calling for a blogger ethics panel? You suppurating wound of supercilious nonsense, you’re a writer for Reason for god’s sake.

You work with a stable of people who are so fucking callous they make a lumberjack’s hands seem like they have been soaking in Palmolive for 12 years.

You bemoan the political classes, you claim to have seen through the teabaggers, and yet, here you are a fucking Republican who just wants to smoke dope. What a sniveling little shit of a post from a sniveling little shit of a man. Smart enough to recognize authority run amok when it comes to the war on drugs but so fucking stupid you make Palin seem a MENSA member.

Face it, Libertarianism is nothing more than sophomoric hubris masquerading as intellectualism. What a fucking tool.

I thought the Examiner article regarding partisanship and trust of the government was pretty good until the very end. Whether or not the Tea Party was ever actually about limiting government I can’t say. However I think that at this point the evidence is overwhelming that it isn’t and the author claiming that they’re “genuinely interested” in limited government seriously undermines the credibility of an otherwise decent piece.

Shecky@ #30, You are certainly right about John Cole / Balloon Juice. Started out as a Bush/Iraq War supporter. Had a brief moment of sanity after disillusionment with Bush/Iraq War. Now an Obama partisan. Much the same story for C.Johnson/LGF & David Horowitz. The most depressing thing about G.Healy’s post is that he’s probably right that unthinking partisanship is part of our genes. We’re all doomed.

Funny, I thought libertarians were liberals who don’t like to pay taxes.

Your denouncements of libertarianism would have some substance if you were a genuine leftist, but no, you’re obviously just another Obama-worshiping fauxgressive who doesn’t seem to mind that the current administration still authorizes extrajudicial killings. Nearly every single one of you twits who blame libertarianism for all that’s wrong with this country (despite libertarians being lucky if they get elected to the local water board) fit that description.

[…] Today’s Comment of the Day comes from HumboldtBlue, in response to this post that I left in the comments section: So Balko, the only reason anyone with a functioning brain reads Reason in the first place is now calling for a blogger ethics panel? You suppurating wound of supercilious nonsense, you’re a writer for Reason for god’s sake. […]

How is lockstep support of libertarian political theory any different than the partisan nonsense you’re decrying about conservatives and liberals? You’re telling me that if a libertarian majority government got elected in America, vastly scaled back the size and scope of government, and generally did the things that you precisely advocate that you also wouldn’t start having a much smaller problem with government, and, dare I say, become much more supportive of it?

This isn’t a problem that infects two particular political ideologies; it’s a problem that infects human beings, who generally believe that when they’re getting the things they want, things must be pretty okay.

I think it’s a bit different, Sam. If we say government does 5 things now, and libertarians think government shouldn’t do 4 of them, then if libertarians were able to get rid of those 4 things, well, I guess they’d have 100% support for the 1 remaining thing. But that’s not “We support government more because we’re in charge”. It’s “We support this thing that government does, and always have, and now we’ve gotten rid of that 80% of things that we didn’t think it should do.”

I really doubt people who are sincerely advocating for the disbanding of something like the Department of Education would change their mind and support the continued existence of that Department of Education if they were in charge of it.

2.
a. Humboldt is a cold ocean current that corrals garbage into the middle of the Pacific.
b. Blue is green without the yellow.

Humboldtblue is a Greenpeace activist worried about the “sea of plastic”, who was invited join the crew of the “garbage explorer”. He was afraid of the open water, so they called him yellow. His witty rejoinder was to christen himself “blue”.

Hey Sam, you miss the point. It isn’t that team blue is getting what they want, it is that their team is in power that makes them happy. (same goes for team red). Want evidence?

The top issues for “team blue” supporters in 2008 (in no particular order) were

1. End the war
2. Close guantanamo
3. End rendition and torture
4. End the wiretapping
5. End the patriot act
6. End the expansion of the executive power

There’s lots of others, but this is a good start. Anyway, exactly none of this has happened. In fact, patriot act, wiretapping, expansion of the executive power have all accelerated under team blue. There’s nice articles over at reason.com about it where you can get a documented version instead of the “off the top of my head” commenter version.

The point being, if team blue supporters actually gave a rats ass about their principles they’d be up in arms. Instead they firmly support their team leaders. Why? Because it is their team, not because it is their ideology.

Team red and team blue are more about team identity than about ideology.

Your description fits the Hit n Run portion of the website, which is, I think, justifiably ridiculed as the “glibertarian” segment of the right. Several contributors are pretty predictable, and have been for years, as to which side they fall on, regardless who’s in power, with a small veneer of outsider impartiality. And where commenters are just as, if not more, obnoxious and unhinged as those found anywhere. A little more thought is put into the actual publication, however.

Maybe. But they spent the aughts paying Cathy Young to defend war in her backhanded way. “I’m not saying the war was right, but it wasn’t NOT right, ya get me?”

And that’s my problem with them in general. Authoritarian policies that Democrats like are always wrong, all the time. Authoritarian policies that Republicans like, well, let’s be evenhanded about this.

I’m honestly not sure any of those issues save ending the war would have cracked the Top 10 by the time of the election in 2008. Meanwhile, your claim only lends credibility to my own: if libertarians saw libertarians in charge and the scope of government diminishing, suddenly they’d be the ones happier with government. When the people you like are the people in charge, you get happier. That’s true regardless of ideology.

Can I just clarify: is the actual belief here that libertarians are somehow different in their political emotions that liberals and conservatives are? I see that my posts keep getting dinged, and that’s something I can live with, but I’m not sure I understand why. I argued that libertarians would be happier with government if other libertarians were in charge of it. Is that a scandalous claim? Why would libertarians be just as dissatisfied with government if people mirroring them and their apparently ideology/self-identification be in charge of it?

Sam, how the hell do you not see the difference? When Obama got elected, Democrats immediately began supporting massive government expansion. When Obama got elected, Republicans immediately began to fear the massive government expansion that they had been supporting for 8 years. If libertarians got elected to a controlling majority of government, the rest of the libertarians wouldn’t suddenly support government expansion under any circumstances. If libertarians were in control, other libertarians would only support them IF they massively shrunk the scope and power of government. That is the difference between independent thought and blind partisanship; Come up with a real argument, and stop with the false equivalence bullshit. Repeating it again won’t make it any more true.

Democrats immediately began supporting a massive government expansion as a result of Obama? Or Democrats had always supported a massive government in particular areas? Republicans began to fear a massive government? Or Republicans began to fear a massive government in certain areas? You’re comparing false things. Republicans and Democrats have always supported powerful governments, just so long as they’re powerful in the areas they prefer. Libertarians support weak governments in the areas they prefer, so I imagine they’d be supportive of a candidate who went to office and worked toward/appeared to follow through.

Libertarian thought, meanwhile, isn’t any more independent than anything else; it just adheres to a different set of rules, depending upon the individual doing the thought. (Just as, obviously, there are different strains of conservatives and liberals.)

It’s not really clear to me that if libertarians got in charge of the government, it would move in directions libertarians prefer. Just as actual Republican rulers pretty much do what actual Democrat rulers would have done, and vice versa, libertarian rulers would very likely just end up doing what was politically profitable for them to do. Of course, I’m sure lots of libertarians would lap up the propaganda and be happier with the government.

N.B. As a libertarian, I’m not particularly interested in “smaller” government; I’m more interested in “less powerful, less effective” government. So I wouldn’t be particularly happy with a libertarian or libertarian-ish government that got leaner, meaner, and more efficient and effective. And if making government bigger can make it more bloated and inefficient and thus less harmful, I’m all for it.

Sam, you are seriously missing the point. Libertarians most definitely wouldn’t be happier just because their people were in charge. They would be happier if government were limited to what they believe to be the proper role of government. To me, at least, government is at best a necessary evil. Even if libertarians did take control of government, I would be just as critical of them if they failed to do what they promised and I would certainly advocate continued vigilance against any re-expansion. The ideal situation for a libertarian is one where you really don’t need to think about government at all. I don’t want anyone to be in charge. That is the point.

I’m not trying to “seriously” miss the point. I just find it odd that the libertarians who supported him wouldn’t have been any happier in 2008 had Ron Paul been elected rather than Obama or McCain. (Ron Paul is, I realize, not an ideal example, given some of his political positions.)